Against the suggestion that we are living in ‘post-political’ times, I argue that the capacity for critical politics is permanent and broadly distributed, as it emerges from the contradictions embedded in our everyday lives. Yet collective mobilisation to change prevailing power formations is not common. Ethnographers are well positioned to explain why this is so, by investigating critique at its incipient stage, when it may be mute or incoherent, and examining how it develops into a world-changing force or—more often—how the emergence of such a force is interrupted. 

All my research engages in some way with practices of politics as I attempt to understand  (1) What is the formation of power that makes people uneasy and become critical of their situation? (2) Through what practices is their critique shared or enunciated? (3) What is the social group that connects to this critique? (4) In what ways do people assemble around a critical position and act to change the configuration of power they have identified as problematic? I also examine (5) What potential or embryonic critiques are not articulated, or (6) do not form the basis for connection and mobilisation, or (7) do not make new worlds? And finally: (8) What are the formations, practices, and affective states that sustain and stabilise the status quo?

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Selected Articles and Book Chapters

Policy and Advocacy